For drinks that are as fun to make as they are to drink, it’s time to start crushing your own ice. Let cocktail expert Talia Baiocchi sell you on the Lewis bag.

As a SoCal kid with family in Hawaii, a matter of great importance growing up was whether the Aloha State’s powdery shave ice was, in fact, better than the classic mainland snow cone, constructed of larger chips of crushed ice. To shave or to crush—that was the question.

Two summers ago, a similar query arose. During a period I now refer to as “The Year of the Sherry Cobbler,” I was gifted a Lewis bag, a canvas sack with triple-stitched seams that was once a staple in 19th-century bars. It’s meant to be stuffed with cubed ice, which is then pounded by a wooden mallet into tiny shards—an act that doubles as dinner-party stress relief. Whack too hard, however, and you’ve got shave ice. And that just won’t do for cobblers and swizzles.

Alex Lau

This Sherry Cobbler with crushed ice is like a grown-up snow cone. Photo: Alex Lau

Of course, I am hardly the first to obsess over crushed ice. Packing the stuff into a glass and topping it with everything from Sherry to rye whiskey was the mid-1800s equivalent of throwing hundred-dollar bills into the air. “Ice was jewelry,” recalls Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi. “None but the rich could wear it.” Crushing it, meanwhile, was a form of irresponsible luxury that was perfectly aligned with a period in American history during which “drunken” was a permanent state of being.

While ice is no longer an extravagance of the wealthy, there is still something about the ritual of clobbering cubes, piling them into a glass, and garnishing with abandon that says, “So this is living.” Can I survive without crushed ice at home or when throwing a party? Probably. Do I want to? Never again.